Eve pulls herself up from the step. Arches her back. “We’ll never close the file,” she says, quietly. “He’s a missing person until he’s no longer missing. But as we told you at the time, he’s a grown man. We don’t even know we have the right name for him and there are more fingerprints in his bus than we could sort through in a lifetime.”
Gordon gives a whistle and two black-and-white dogs emerge from the gaping maw of the barn behind him. They nose around his feet and he pets them, absently, as he chews his tongue, searching for the right words.
“He wasn’t happy,” he says, at last.
“I know, you said that in your statement …,”
“But you’re not going to look for him anymore,” he adds, accusingly. “Even with the blood. With what I’ve told you.”
Eve looks away. She’s already said all this to her Detective Superintendent. She’s not at all convinced that Arthur Sixpence just upped and left one day, leaving his possessions behind and saying no goodbyes. What’s more, the science officers and sniffer dogs have identified a substantial quantity of blood staining the roots of a yew tree near the spot where he parked his battered old campervan and did his best to live a quiet life. Eve’s spoken to plenty of people who knew him. None have had a bad word to say. He was quiet. A little timid. Kind. A bit awkward – perhaps a little odd. But gentle. That’s the word people keep using. He was a ‘gentle’ soul. Helped where he could. Did what he could. Eve is starting to wish she’d gone to the trouble of meeting him before upped and left. She’s heard about his healing ceremonies; his attempts to heal troubled souls. She’d liked to have seen how the trick was done.
Mr Shell, with whom Sixpence enjoyed regular campfire drinking sessions, had been clear when he made the initial call to the police: something bad had happened to his friend. He hasn’t changed his mind. Eve hasn’t been looking forward to telling him that her superiors have decided to scale down the operation. Eve’s turned up nothing to suggest that Mr Sixpence is worth any more of their valuable time. One of the pupils at Silver Birch gave the vaguest of descriptions about seeing him with a young man, dressed in ragged Hippy clothes, but both Mr Tunstall and Mr Rideal said there was nothing unusual about that. Lots of people from the travelling community made their way to Mr Sixpence’s bus over the course of any given year. Nor had they even been able to give much in the way of background detail on the man who offered ‘guidance and alternative therapies’ to pupils when life began to hit them harder than they could stand. He travelled a lot, that much they were clear on. South America; India; Indonesia, North Africa – even as far away as Papua New Guinea. This was according to the housemaster, who had once questioned him on the places he had seen and would like to see again. Eve isn’t sure how much to believe. Sixpence seems to have been in the habit of telling people stories that verged on the fanciful. He claimed to have visited parts of the Soviet Union; to have made his way behind the Iron Curtain to learn from mountain men in the cold darkness of Siberia. It was at that point that Eve realized that if Mr Sixpence didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.
“You know he had kids stay with him sometimes, don’t you?” asks Shell. “Kids with problems. Kids who saw things that weren’t there, or heard voices, or couldn’t help themselves pulling the wings off their pet canary. He’d try and help them. He was a good person. He tried.”
Eve sees genuine sadness in the farmer’s eyes – more than she would expect.
“I think I’d like him,” says Eve, as kindly as she can. “I like most people who want to help others.”
Gordon nods, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his overalls. “I don’t like that Rideal bloke,” he confides. “I don’t like very much about that whole bloody school. I don’t mind a bit of the hippy-trippy bollocks and if they want their kids to do all that bending and stretching instead of learning to play football, that’s their look-out. But I know they took advantage of Sixpence. Pushed him further than he wanted to be pushed. He didn’t mind giving the talks to the kids and helping people who needed it but Rideal was starting to use him like he owned him. He’d even had fliers and brochures done up talking about their remarkable on-site healer who led meditation classes and had studied spirituality all round the world. Sixpence was too much of a gentleman to ever make a fuss but it was wearing him out. He wanted to be free – that was all he’d ever wanted. And like I told you before, they weren’t happy about calling you in. It weren’t until we saw the blood that they got off their arses.”
“This mistake,” asks Eve, intrigued. “Did he ever elaborate?”
Shell shakes his head, angry with himself for never having pushed harder. “He spoke about one of the kids who’d stayed with him,” he says, screwing up his eyes in concentration. “Somebody who needed to find the lost pieces of himself. That’s what he said, and I know that sounds like nonsense but you’ve got to remember that’s how he talked. It was like being pals with a wizard sometimes, it really was. He just said that he should never have taken him through.”
“Through where?” asks Eve.
Shell shrugs again, blowing out air through his dry lips. “He wasn’t the easiest bloke to understand. He said stuff that made no sense to me, but I don’t think he understood half of what I was going on about neither. For all that, we were pals.”
“He might still turn up, Gordon,” says Eve, and it sounds a horribly weak platitude.
Shell shakes his head. “No, love. He’s gone. Passed through.”
Eve decides that silence is the best approach. She gives him a nod, and lightly squeezes his forearm as she moves past him, giving both soggy collies a rub behind the ear as she trudges through the yard: the grey mass of the valley opening out before her like the pages of an unfolded book. She’s left a uniformed constable waiting a little way down the hill, warm and snug in the patrol car. As she makes her way towards it she’s surprised to see that there is a large silver Mercedes parked nearby, wheels precariously close to the edge of the road and the tiered drop down to the lake’s edge. A burly man with receding hair and one too many chins is leaning against the bonnet, chatting to the PC. He’s wearing a dark coat over a black suit, the trouser-legs stuffed into green Wellington boots. Over the smell of the smoke and the farm; the cloying miasma of rotting hay; the iron tang of the distant lake, Eve detects a scent she remembers. It’s a blend of pipe-smoke, talcum powder and extra-strong mints. She finds herself smiling, unexpectedly, as the man on the bonnet comes into focus.
“Well, well, well,” she begins, wincing into the rain.
“It’s ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello,” says the visitor, and as he grins he exposes short, stubby teeth. “Did I teach you nothing?”
“Everything, sir,” smiles Eve, in return. She wonders if they’re on hugging terms or if she’d be better served by a handshake. She does neither. Just stands and smiles at him; a child happy to get a visit from a kindly Grandad.
By the edge of the road, the PC looks from one to the other; an umpire at a tennis match.
“This is Derrick Millward,” explains Eve, waving a hand. “My old boss.”
“DCI, as was,” says Millward, nodding to the PC. “Private sector now, of course. Better pay, shorter hours, not as many people trying to saw your balls off with a hacksaw …,”
“Don’t tell me you’re not nostalgic,” smiles Eve.
“Can’t let myself, Eve,” he says, affecting an air of wistful nostalgia. “My head's awash with memories already. You know I grew up here, don’t you? Farming’s loss was the navy’s gain. Then coppering since ’51. Bet that makes me seem ancient to you buggers, eh? Did you know, I caught one of the last murderers to get the death penalty?”